


Public Enemies (The Secret Lovers Remix)

by msermesth



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Biphobia, Emotional Hurt, Established Relationship, Extremis, Guilt, Hallucinations, Haunted Arc, Homophobia, M/M, News Media, Outing, Sex Tapes, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 08:11:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13713555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msermesth/pseuds/msermesth
Summary: “They have a video of Steve and I.Together.” Tony pauses and hopes Maria won’t make him explain further. A quick check confirms that it’s already on YouTube. In one-point-five minutes, it’s going to be trending on twitter.“Why didn’t you tell me?” Maria stands, defiance written in her eyes, and Tony knows she already has a plan.Tony mirrors her posture. “Because you don’t get to know everything about me.”You don’t get to taint this for me, he thinks.I’ve done a great job tainting it all by myself.





	Public Enemies (The Secret Lovers Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Choosing Happiness (ignore the haters)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13630365) by [AngeNoir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir). 



> [Russian translation by Alisa_Kaplan](https://ficbook.net/readfic/6588261)
> 
>  
> 
> This is a very sad fic.
> 
> WARNING: there is A LOT of homophobia and biphobia in this, I would tag it “period typical”, but that period is now :( Also, this fic’s premise is that the media outs Steve and Tony without their consent.
> 
> Much thanks to [Ironlawyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/pseuds/Ironlawyer) for helping me brainstorm this one. ALSO, she then read a beautiful podfic version of this story you can listen to [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951183)
> 
> This relay is part of a chain; you can find the full [masterlist](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Cap_Ironman_Relay_Remix_2018/profile) on the Collection profile page.

It’s surprising—for a man with a supercomputer for a brain, Tony learns about way too many things the hard way.

He can sense Maria is standing by the door. Tony knows her well enough to know that if it’s important, she’ll say something. “Director…” she starts and then Tony realizes that if she is using that tone, he was wrong to assume anything.

He’s only heard her use it once before, and that one time was enough. Whatever she’s going to follow-up with won’t be good.

He raises his hand to avoid hearing it from her mouth.

It only takes seconds—the benefit and curse of Extremis—to pull up exactly what he’s supposed to preparing for. It’s the live video feed of an internet radio show hosted by Joe Alex, some conspiracy theorist that has a surprising amount of followers. If it wasn’t for the fact that his support may have changed the outcome of at least two congressional races, he wouldn’t be on Tony’s radar at all

But Tony’s been underestimating him if what Jones is saying is true.

Tony looks to Maria and he’s seen that face before; she’s sympathetic but annoyed. She spends too much of her job cleaning up Tony’s messes.

And what a mess this is.

They’re introducing the video, what they call the irrefutable proof of Rogers and Stark’s disgusting sin, and Tony runs to through every possibility. It could have been any of the times in the mansion or the tower: maybe that foray into restraints or the attempt to use Extremis as a recording device.

Tony waits, his heart beating fast and his breath ragged. He’s using some of his functioning to find a way into their system to stop them, but his instincts are all over the place and his mind can’t stick to one plan long enough to actually _do_ something. Maria is watching him and Tony wants to scream at her to do here damn job, even though none of it is her fault.

It takes them minutes to describe how _shocking_ and _scandalous_ the video is and then it plays. Tony’s expecting to see his bedroom back in the tower.

But that’s not that at all.

It’s an empty beach. Just white sand and turquoise water and a brightly colored over sized towel next to where Tony’s holding the camera.

_“Tony!” Steve shouts somewhere behind him and Tony turns with the camera to see Steve and all his swimsuit-clad glory. He’s sweaty and just a hint tan, with his hair mussed from spending the morning in the salt water._

_Steve sits on the towel next to Tony and hands him a virgin daiquiri. Tony regards it and exaggerates his annoyance. “You know this is just a strawberry slush?”_

_“But it’s got a little umbrella.”_

It had taken an unenforceable ultimatum to get Steve on that beach for that one weekend and already it’s going by too, too fast. Oh, fuck. Tony _aches_. Steve looks so young and happy and _alive_. Tony wishes he doesn’t remember any of it. 

_When they finish their drinks in silence—the sounds of the waves are the perfect accompaniment—Steve sits his down in the sand and pushes it in to make sure it doesn’t fall over. Then he crawls over to Tony. His eyes are alight with something Tony wants to always remember. There is heat in that look, but also something softer and hopeful. He straddles Tony’s waist and Tony puts the camera on the sand without any care as to whether the sand will ruin it._

_“I love you,” Steve says, almost awed._

_“I love you, too,” Tony replies._

The video plays for another minute and there’s the unmistakable sounds of heated kissing in the background, but all the viewers can see are sand and waves. No one will have any doubt of what happened after. It cuts off then, but whether to save the viewers from more salacious material or just because that’s just when Tony remembered to turn it off, he doesn’t know.

The radio show host is still talking and Tony can’t seem to tell Extremis to stop playing.

“Well, turns out all those rumors about Tony Stark were true!” the host says and his voice drips with angry glee. “Always knew I couldn’t trust the guy. But I never would have guessed Steve Rogers was a fag.” Tony sucks in a painful breath and sits down. He’s trying to turn off the feed but the volume only seems to get louder. The host continues to prattle on. “Now, I’m not going to say that Rogers, God rest his soul, deserved to be shot—” Tony wonders when Steve stopped being Captain America and became ‘Rogers’, but he knows it’s his fault “—but I’m not surprised. You can’t go flouting the will of God and then expect not to pay for it. Now, I’m curious to hear what _you_ , the audience, thinks about these revelations. How safe are we with Tony Stark in charge of world security? Does Rogers still deserve the title of Captain America? Which one do you think was the woman in the relationship? Talk to me! The number is—”

Tony finally gets enough control of Extremis to stop the feed and he has two blissful seconds of silence before he realizes there is no one in the world who is not going to see it. He turns to the wastebasket on the side of his desk and vomits, not even aware his body was still capable of reacting this way.

He finally turns back to Maria, because no matter how much Tony wants to hide away in his quarters, this is now a SHIELD problem. “They have a video of Steve and I. _Together_.” He pauses and hopes she won’t make him explain further.

“A sex tape?” she asks without shame.

“Worse,” Tony barely gets out but doesn’t elaborate. A quick check confirms that it’s already on YouTube. In one-point-five minutes, it’s going to be trending on twitter.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Maria stands, defiance written in her eyes, and Tony knows she already has a plan.

Tony mirrors her posture. “Because you don’t get to know everything about me.” _You don’t get to taint this for me,_ he thinks.

 _I’ve done a great job tainting it all by myself_.

She doesn’t back down. That’s why she does what she does. “I get to know everything about SHIELD. And, for better or for worse, you’re SHIELD now.”

He doesn’t try to argue with that. He doesn’t have the time. “Okay. What do you think we should do?” he asks because he knows she’s already thought of everything while he’s been unraveling for the last five minutes.

“Who knew about the two of you?”

Tony staggers and feels a sort of physical whiplash at the question. “No one,” he responds and watches Maria’s eyebrow raise. “We didn’t tell anyone, and no one ever said anything. I can’t guarantee no one had an idea, but no one should have proof.”

She looks relieved and asks, “Is that the only video?” Tony shakes his head and the relief falls from her face. “So a thief or a hacker could have done this. Where are the others?”

“I destroyed all of mine.” Tony had burned all the evidence when Steve died. All the pictures and letters and movies were just as clear stored in his brain and hard copies were a liability for this very reason.

Maria’s looking at him like he’s stupid. “What about Steve?”

 

* * *

 

Steve liked the videos. It always confused Tony—Steve’s memory was almost as good as his—but Steve still wanted them. He mentioned once, under his breath, that he appreciated the ‘permanence’ of having their late nights and stolen moments on tape. Secretly, Tony was torn between whether Steve liked the danger of their secret being possibly discovered or that he thought the movies made their relationship ‘real’.

Tony always thought of them as an unnecessary risk.

 

* * *

 

The next day, the entry on Joe Alex’s facebook page has been shared over five hundred thousand times.

Tony’s favorite tech blog has an entire rant on the ethics of privacy in regards to sex tapes and the internet’s infinite memory.

The headline of the New York Times just reads “Secret Video Reveals Captain America and Iron Man Were in Love.”

 

* * *

 

Maria and Tony had decided to take the ‘do nothing’ approach and hope that the world just assumes it’s a fake, given the source. Tony would prefer to deny, deny, deny, and do everything he can to convince the world that when they look back on Steve Rogers, their perceptions are not be tainted by Tony.

“You ok?” Carol asks when she sees him for the first time.

“I’m fine,” Tony responds and he’s lucky the voice modulator makes it sound almost true. He’s barely opened the face plate since the video came out.

She sighs and all the knowledge behind her eyes makes Tony never want to leave the suit. “It wasn’t a fake," she confirms.

Tony shuts his eyes tight; his breathing becomes shallower. “It wasn’t a fake.”

 

* * *

 

Tony set up an alert through Extremis so that he would be aware of any mention of the tape. He regrets it, now, because the tape seems to be the thing everyone wants to talk about, but it ranks pretty low on the list of things he regrets, so he lets his mind be filled with all the voices talking about Steve like it doesn’t matter than he’s dead.

“I feel like we haven’t talked about that, did we talk about this, Chris?” A morning talk show host asks her hosting partner.

“You’re curious why they didn’t tell anyone?” he responds.

She takes a sip of coffee. “Yeah. I mean, if I was sleeping with Steve Rogers or Tony Stark, I’d shout it from the rooftops.”

The other host chuckles. “I might have to tell your husband that.” The audience laughs on cue.

After the rancor dies down, the original host gets quiet. “I just don’t get it. Were they ashamed?” she asks and Tony stands up and walks as fast as he can out of the confines of the helicarrier’s control room.

The other shrugs, Tony sees it through Extremis at the edge of his vision while he pushes past agents staring at him. “I guess we’ll just have to ask Tony Stark. Maybe we can book him next week.”

Tony’s on the deck of the helicarrier. Up here, the sound of the wind almost drowns out the all the feeds. It’s not just TV news, either, because radio talk shows and YouTube influencers and news podcasters won’t stop talking about it. So Tony opens the face plate and listens to the air around his ears.

Extremis just turns up the volume.

 

* * *

 

Tony doesn’t spend a lot of time in the tower, anymore, and it’s not that it feels lonely. Lonely he can handle, lonely he handles _just fine_. If anything, it isn’t lonely enough. Tony would do anything to scrub out the reminders of the old team. He’s even considered just blowing up the last few floors and rebuilding them, but it wouldn’t matter.

The ghosts are never going to leave.

Instead, he’s settled on boarding it all up and sleeping on the helicarrier.

But as he stands before the door to Steve’s old room, he wishes he had dismantled the entire block.

He opens the door, because he has to _know_ , and he can’t stand the idea of letting Maria do it.

Everything is as Steve left it before the SHRA shitstorm happened and Steve began to permanently spend his time at his Brooklyn loft. It’s clean, but in a lived in way; there’s a pair of khakis thrown carefully over a chair so that they don’t lose their crease and a light pencil sketch of the Avengers drawn on canvas next to the window. There is a fantasy novel with a library card tucked in, keeping Steve’s place. It’s everything Tony remembered and he opens the face plate just to smell it.

He sits on the bed, right next to the night stand, and opens the book to the last spot Steve read. It’s only when the pages become dotted with tears that he realizes he’s been crying this entire time. The book falls to the floor and Tony ignores it, his eyes settling on the second drawer of Steve’s nightstand.

There’s chatter in the background of his mind. Sally Floyd is currently talking to Anderson Cooper about whether or not the entire SHRA debacle could be chalked up to a lover’s tiff. Sean Hannity is insisting that Tony isn’t fit for his job and justifying it by saying that Tony clearly can’t make decisive decisions if he can’t settle on a gender he’s like to fuck.

Reluctantly, he opens it and looks inside. Just like he expected, it’s a jumble of sex toys that were always thrown in hastily after the act. There is a bottle of lube right next to a box of expired condoms they never used.

And a small hard drive, just where Tony remembers it.

Tony picks it up. The fact that it’s still there means nothing. Maybe Steve kept copies in other places. Hell, he could have have it all on his computer in Brooklyn (though Tony pities the person who thought it was a good idea to break into a place Bucky Barnes sleeps). Or maybe, someone was good enough to beat Tony at his own security system.

He pushes that thought out of his mind. He knows his tower is more protected than the Helicarrier.

It hurts, sitting here, yet he wants to barricade himself in with all these little reminders of Steve and their stolen moments.

Steve had wanted their friends to know, and Tony wanted it to be a secret. In the last couple of days, Tony can’t decide if that was the right or wrong call.

Tony puts the hard drive right back where he found it and closes the drawer. He lets the suit fall to the floor, lets the under-sheath disappear below his skin, lets himself sit on the bed and feel the blanket under his hands.

“Tony?”

The sound of _that_ voice makes his head snap up. It’s… Steve.

“You aren’t real,” Tony whispers, trying to remind himself of the last time he saw Steve since his death.

“No, I’m not.”

“Then why?” he asks, louder this time, as if he thinks Steve is really there to hear him.

Steve responds by sitting on the bed next to him. The mattress dips under his weight, Tony swears, and he can’t help leaning into Steve’s mirage. “They’re saying you’re not a hero,” Tony says.

“I know you don’t believe that.” Steve wraps an arm round his shoulders and pulls him closer.

“I don’t.” Tony believes most of what they’re saying is bullshit. So, he says the one thing he knows that isn’t. “They’re saying it’s my fault. They think I that I ruined you.”

Steve laughs and Tony revels in the way his body shakes. “You know that’s not true.”

“I seduced you.”

“I like to think we seduced each other.”

“Steve…” Tony whines and then gets quiet. “I wanted to keep it secret. That was me, _all me_ , and then I killed you—”

"You didn't—"

"I  _did_."

“Ok, maybe you did,” Steve responds and lets it sit there. “What do you want, Tony? To destroy yourself, to take me down with you?” His voice is rising and it bounces around in the room. Something in the air changes. Suddenly Tony feels like he needs his armor again.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Yes, you do.” Steve’s gripping his shoulder now and it scares him but Tony represses all instincts to protect himself. It's not hard. “You must have figured it out by now.”

“Figured _what_ out?” Tony curls in on himself. He’s crying, falling apart, and something in the back of his head won’t listen to his insistence to just _shut up_.

Steve stands up, and the mirage of intimacy just falls away. “ _You_ released the tapes. It wasn’t a hacker or a super-villian. It was _you_.”

“NO! I would never do that,” Tony screams but his voice is cut off by his own sobs.

Steve laughs and Tony wishes Steve would just hurt him instead than stare at him with this much disgust. “Or it was Extremis. Which, at this point, is more you than you actually are.” Steve never liked Extremis. “You didn’t ruin me, you ruined _us_. And you’re still doing it.”

“Steve—” Tony tries to get out. He wishes he had something to say that could make this stop.

Then Steve’s gone, like he was never in the room.

Tony hears all the blog posts and tweets and news segments and think-pieces and hot takes and radio rants and everything else people are saying about him.

There is a video on YouTube that just loops cellphone footage of the battle in New York—the one in which he asked Steve to 'finish it'—with the audio from that day on the beach.

In his mind, Steve raises his shield right when he tells Tony that he loves him.

Tony shuts everything else out and lets it play.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr post](https://msermesth.tumblr.com/post/171489045984/public-enemies-the-secret-lovers-remix)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Exposed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13762044) by [kenshincha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenshincha/pseuds/kenshincha)
  * [[Podfic] Public Enemies (The Secret Lovers Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951183) by [IronAudio (Ironlawyer)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ironlawyer/pseuds/IronAudio)




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